The Creation with Poetic License

About 10,000 years ago there was nothing. No time, no space, no matter. There was nothing in existence at all. Except God. God began his creation before Earth ever had a start. The moment time started ticking, God made heaven and created beings called angels to worship him and serve him. Ultimately, that would be the role of all living things to come.

All physical matter was created in six literal days. On the first day, God created the heavens and the Earth, but all was empty. Our planet is the emphasis of the story and the first anything to appear at all. It began as a shapeless mass of water but, at the first, if we had been there, we would have seen nothing; there was no light. Then God said, “Let there be light!” and everything snapped into beautiful colour, reflecting this supernatural illumination. The first day, having begun with the light of day, ended with night as evening came to completion.

On the second day, as light once again began to glow its second dawn on the liquid Earth, God did another great work and the water of the Earth became divided. Below, a smaller sphere of water formed and, above that, the atmosphere, composed of water, encircled the earth. And, again, darkness fell out of the evening upon the watery Earth.

The third day brought the greatest miracle of the Creation yet. God had plans to bring the first biological organisms into the world. But the world was still wholly made of water and, God wasn’t going to limit them to an aquatic existence. He loves diversity and dry land was a must for that. Suddenly, the water sank away and land rose from the waters. The earth was no longer uniform blue. It was bi-color.

Day three was the beginning of a beautiful trend in biodiversity. Plants,
especially angiosperms (flowering plants), would have produced such
variety of colour. Today is only a tiny flavour of what it was in the
beginning.

And then vegetation appeared. The face of the earth flushed with green joy and the sea experienced its first and best plankton bloom. Moisture filled the air and furbished the plants into life and growth. The Lord made a very important statement for these living things. He commanded them to reproduce “after their various kinds.” And it was so. They could reproduce, change, diversify, transfer their genes in many varying ways, but they would always be the same kind.

Day four and beauty became a feature of the entire universe, rather than just earth. It doesn’t seem too remarkable until you think about it. He made the sun, the moon, and the stars. Suddenly, light was of a different sort. Day and night were dictated by something other then supernatural light now. Light would now emanate from natural sources. The laws of nature became more distinct, more like they are today.

If the days of creation had a biological climax, day five was it. The water’s teamed with living creatures. Whales, squid, turtles, you name it. With a second word the air erupted with music; birds had just been created from the dust of the earth and sprung into the atmosphere. But not just birds, every other flying thing streaked across the sky to their first resting places. Pterosaurs, bats, and a fabulous array of insects claimed earth as their own.

The sixth day was no less important for biodiversity. Land had the plants, but now living souls would share the dry ground. At a command, the ungulate herbivores, small creeping creatures, wild dogs and cats, and a host of other creatures marked the finish of God’s creative act of nature, and he loved them. All of these living creatures, regardless of where they lived, were also commanded to reproduce after their kinds. And they obeyed.

This day would be different than the rest. Nature would not be left alone. It was God’s intent to make a keeper, a steward of all that he had created, Adam, the ruler of all God’s creatures. The breath of God coursed through man’s body and he became a conscious soul. God’s first command to man was to name “the beasts of field” (those creatures that moved in herds) and the flying creatures. The brilliant perfect mind that he had, Adam found the task too easy.

God loves good stories and Adam was lonely. It was time for the first romance. Adam fell asleep. This would be a special creation. While Adam, all the land animals, and the flying creatures had been made from mere dust of the earth, the woman would be made from Adam’s side. He awoke and found the love of his life, Eve. God himself orchestrated the first marriage.

Then God grew sober and he gave them a command; “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Mankind would be solely responsible for the well being of the animals. The second command of God was conservation.

May 10, 2013 Part 1

Columbia River Gorge, Day 2A:

Only her bulging eyes
hint at the pain this
snake feels after
being hit by a car.

The California Mountain Kingsnake. The only one I've
ever found. It's a shame it will almost certainly be dead
shortly.

Fence lizard on a fence. Living up
to his name.

This morning we left camp early to go searching for reptiles at Catherine Creek, on the Washington side of the gorge. On the way there, my Dad spotted a snake on the road, so we pulled over and a couple of us ran back to see what if Dad's guess of California mountain kingsnake was right. It was but, sadly, the reptile had already been hit by a car and was close to death. Externally, she appeared fine but the only movements she could make were slow writhing shoves of her coils. I gently moved her off the road, but I doubted she would live another hour. She was probably the most beautiful snake I'd seen up to that point, and its sad that it had to be a roadkill specimen.

Fence lizard on rock, not living up to
his name.

Do you think she's pregnant? This
ground squirrel's teats were swollen.

Driving on from there to the trailhead parking lot, we pulled out our "snake sticks" and trekked out poking our improvised paint rollers into holes and under logs. Soon, we were catching southern alligator lizards and fence lizards around the creek's edge.
We stopped for lunch at a large pile of timber and watched a large male fence lizard do pushups on the highest plank to impress his females. It was pretty impressive. A ground squirrel soon showed up on the stack as well. It almost seemed like she was trying to stalk the lizards. She would have taken food from us I think if we had given her any. Daniel, my brother, tried catching the male fence lizard but he was outwitted.
I was beginning to think we wouldn't see any living snakes today but, thankfully, that proved to be wrong. My brother, moving ahead while we finished lunch, soon made up for his humiliating experience with the fence lizard. Calling, he alerted us to a gopher snake that was crossing the path. Gopher snakes are a species that one really cannot get enough of. They have beautiful faces and beautiful personalities, and are extremely photogenic. I took plenty of pictures and handled it a little, but it seemed to be fairly aggressive for a gopher snake. It mustn't have liked my camera.

Isn't that the most beautiful face you've ever seen? I'm not sure what subspecies of gopher snake these are. They might even be hybrids between the pacific and great basin subspecies.

He's saying, "I'll bite you if you come any closer!" Of course, it's just a bluff. I picked him up and he didn't follow through.

Only a short ways further I caught a second gopher snake and this one was really cranky. Striking at my lens and lunging at the family when they got too close. It is amazing how each snake has it's own personality. They certainly aren't programmed robots. They are individuals with their own likes and dislikes. Though I was hoping for a more complacent individual, it's nice to see some good, old-fashioned fear of people in these two snakes.

Lupines in a pine grove.

This gopher snake was pretty cranky.

Can anyone tell me what kind of
wildflower this is?

More lupines.

The trail led us into a beautiful grove of deciduous trees and a variety of wildflowers sprang up from the grasses. It was a beautiful place and I employed my camera on the purples of the wildflowers. And nearly all of them were a shade of purple! I photographed lupines, paintbrush, blue-eyed grass (I think) and other species that I couldn't identify. One of the flowers had a pretty little flower longhorn beetle on it. While the young of this species bore into trees and feed on the wood, the adults enjoy feeding on the pollen and nectar of flowers.

This is a flower longhorn beetle on an
unidentified wildflower.

This must be an alpine paintbrush.

Mount Hood stands out behind the
Columbia River Gorge.

After some time of beating around in the lush forests in the Catherine Creek valley, the trail carried us out onto a bare hill for a better look at the at the Columbia River Gorge. It was amazing to think that, as we stood there in the blistering heat of the hill with only a few scant and withered pines around us, that we had just come out of a relatively lush forest. Looking toward Mount Hood and its frozen Eliot Glacier my eyes drifted down into the temperate rainforest that surounds the mountain and finally to the rocky basalt shores of the Columbia River. So much diversity in such a short span of distance.

Florescent lichen.

There was a beautiful piece of lichen on an old sun-dried pine log on the hill and, though I tried, I couldn't seem to capture exactly how brilliantly florescent it was with my camera.

A tiny taste of things to come.

The trail led us back into the valley shortly and I took a few more wildflower pictures and practiced using slow shutter speeds with my camera on water. The mossy rock amid the foaming stream made a nice shot, but scarcely compares to our next destination today.
Because of formatting issues with my new blog design, this post has been split into two new posts this one, and Day 2B, here.